


Run

by Benniclark



Series: Original Works - Creative Writing Class [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8254252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benniclark/pseuds/Benniclark
Summary: The wip for this was titled "Dystopian Dickensian Kids," so that's enough of a summary, right?





	

Sam’s shorn short hair blew into her eyes as she rounded the corner into a smaller alleyway. The food in her small canvas bag would be enough to feed herself and another for at least a week, and she hoped that her brother had had similar luck that day.

The echo of pounding steps behind her pushed her to be faster, she had been caught once before with her bag of stolen food and she most certainly did not want it to happen again. Although the city she ran through was small in population, it had a fair amount of alleys of differing size. There were plenty enough to get lost in, or to lose someone in.

Rounding another corner, she heard the pattering approach of bare feet, and where two alleys came together as one Sam ran into her twin.

He smiled at her through the gap from his missing front teeth, and they ran together to the edge of the city, dodging their pursuers the whole way. At the edge of the city and over the river was their family. When they entered their small, isolated shack, two younger children immediately rose up to greet them.

The coal-eyed boy was the first to speak as they dumped their bags on their one low table.

“Were you guyth followed thith time?”  He pulled the tiny, dirty blond boy behind him; as if his lisping self could possibly protect the smaller boy from any adult intruder.

The twins look at each other, then back to the other two children, and shake their heads.

“Not today,” Sam steps forward to pat the heads of the smaller boys. Behind them, her brother pulls a small portion of food out of his bag.

“I’ll probably be home before nightfall,” he says heading back to the door of the shack and pulling a long wire brush from behind it. “Lots of chimneys on the richer side of town though.”

He grins at them all and runs his hand through the blond boy’s hair, before swaggering out of their dwelling into the early morning bustle of the city.

“Still never heard of a thweep without a ‘dult puthing ‘em up a chimney.” Sam glares at the coal-eyed boy, and he sighs and goes to sort through all that they brought in that day. As she sits beside the blond boy on one of their two cots the coal-eyed boy speaks up again.

“I don’t get why you’th won’t jutht let me pick thum pocket-th. We’d be livin’ pretty on that thide of town in a week, ‘cauth I’m real good at it.”

The girl sighs. “Look, when we let you join us, Tommy, you agreed that we’d only be taking food, and that was only if we had to take anything at all. If you really want money, you should be a chimney sweep like Tanner. He’s almost too big now anyways, now that we’re almost nine.”

Tommy looks up from the bags, and opens his mouth to argue back, but the usually silent tiny blond boy whimpers “please no fight” the moment before Tanner crashes back through the door, spilling soot and ash into their shack.

“Um… so, we were followed back to here from the market. Or a law person recognized me from this morning when I went to work today. Or something. But, um, we should probably—“

Before he can even finish his rambling statement, his sister is shoving a bag in his hands, and the younger two have grabbed almost all of their things and are stuffing them into bags. Tanner grabs his and his sister’s bags.

“Tom, you’re with me.” He yells over his shoulder as he leaves. The coal-eyed boy follows him without question, despite his earlier complaints, leaving the blond boy and the girl twin in the shack.

“Ready to go? Do you want me to carry you?” She asks the tiny boy, smoothing a hand over his dirty hair. He sniffles, and whispers his words so that she has to lean close to barely hear them.

“but i like here”

“I know you do. I’m sorry.” Sam looks around their home one last time after she pulls the smallest boy onto her back, checking to see if there was anything that the other two had left behind. There was nothing.

“I liked it here too,” she sighs. Running to the other side of the city, their meeting point, wasn’t hard, even with the added weight of a tiny person on her back.

It was what they did for a living, and had done for all of their young lives after all: run.


End file.
